Why do los zetas kill

Beginning as a group of deserters from an elite unit of the armed forces at the service of the Gulf Cartel, the Zetas would go on to become one of the most powerful and feared cartels in Mexico before infighting and the loss of leaders started the organization's decline.

The Zetas started out as an enforcer gang for the Gulf Cartel predominantly made up of former soldiers with specialized training. Their military background and unbridled ferocity proved an underworld game changer, with the US Drug Enforcement Administration DEA describing them as perhaps "the most technologically advanced, sophisticated and violent of these paramilitary enforcement groups. The Zetas broke away from the Gulf Cartel in the mids to become its own group, and launched an offensive that would see them expand throughout Mexico and Guatemala.

The group employed a new model of organized crime, based on violently seizing and holding territory, using fear rather than corruption as a first resort. However, after rising to the point where they could compete with the mighty Sinaloa Cartel, the Zetas are now a fragmented force, held together by little more than a name and increasingly dependent on local criminal revenues rather than the transnational flow of drugs for their income.

Under the leadership of Heriberto Lazcano, alias "El Lazca" or "Z3," the Zetas, numbering approximately , set up their own independent drug, arms and human-trafficking networks.

The Zetas' logistical sophistication and military training helped catapult the group to power. They became known for their use state-of-the-art weapons and communications technology, and for employing military-like discipline in planning operations and gathering intelligence. Unlike other cartels, the Zetas did not buy alliances so much as terrorize their enemies. They tortured victims, strung up bodies, and slaughtered indiscriminately, as was brutally illustrated in August , when the Zetas killed 72 migrants and dumped their bodies in a hole in Tamaulipas.

The Zetas preferred to take military-style control of territory, holding it through sheer force and exploiting its criminal opportunities. Although their military training was diluted over time, their brutality was not. Rival cartels struggling against the Zetas began to adopt some of their tactics, further ramping up violence in the country.

By , the Zetas had established a presence in Mexican municipalities, over twice as many as their nearest rivals. They had also moved into Guatemala, seizing strategic drug trafficking territories with their trademark violence.

However, they were in nearly constant war with the Gulf Cartel over control of the key border state of Tamaulipas, especially the cities of Matamoros, Reynosa and Nuevo Laredo, as well as the key economic hub of Monterrey. It was not until early when the authorities began searching for the remains of at least local people who had been murdered and buried in outlying farms.

Some 80 houses were destroyed by heavy machinery, and around 80 families were kidnapped and never seen again. The remains of a number of bodies dissolved in diesel fuel were found in large barrels, but could not be identified.

Local police reportedly stood by as the Zetas went about their grisly business. Three of the men who ordered the slaughter are in the United States, two of whom are believed to be in a witness protection scheme. What did the federal authorities do or allow to be done?

The Zetas have been seriously weakened in recent years: Heriberto Lazcano, one of its founders , is dead. The organization has largely fallen apart as a result, and Aguayo says it is hard to know who is in charge. Pablo de Llano. Copy link. Some of the 72 people killed in Tamaulipas in Brutal leader of Zetas cartel is captured Luis Prados Mexico.

These decisions and more produced the net effect of establishing Los Zetas as an independent organization while distancing it from the Gulf Cartel. As the two organizations grew apart, El Coss steadily captured command of the Gulf Cartel, and in a snap decision ordered in early the kidnap and murder of a Los Zetas operator in Reynosa.

El Coss refused, and war ensued. War in the North and Expansion After an initial setback in early , when Los Zetas defended their organization from an alliance of three drug trafficking organizations stitched together by the Gulf Cartel, the former bodyguards surged back into the criminal underworld, with well established bases in Nuevo Laredo, Fresnillo, Veracruz, and in Coban, Guatemala. By late , the organization was in position to get back to business with its extortion and taxation, as well as drug trafficking.

As Los Zetas grew independent of the Gulf Cartel, the organization was at a disadvantage because it did not have contacts in Colombia or other Andean drug source countries. Nuevo Laredo was a direct shot along I to one of the hottest drug markets in the United States: Chicago.

Trevino began as early as with steady shipments of cocaine and marijuana through Laredo and Houston, pushing his network east along I and I, and north along I, extending as far north as Chicago, and east to Atlanta. He first used teenage hit men, known as zetitas, then settled on Texas-based street gangs, as well as the Mara Salvatrucha, which had a national presence, to move product downstream, and enforce the return of funds back into Mexico.

The nature of the trafficking business spurred the development of Los Zetas-connected wholesale points across the United States, amounting to as many as 37 cities in the midwest, northeastern and southeastern regions of the United States by , according to a leaked National Drug Intelligence Center situation report.

In a separate case, three alleged members of a Los Zetas hit-team attacked an undercover informant while he was delivering a truckload of marijuana outside of Houston in mid-November. It was an example of an unprecedented use of force and an indication of the ongoing feud between Los Zetas and their former masters in the Gulf Cartel, who investigators believe owned the load.

By the end of , and despite ongoing spats with the Gulf Cartel, it was clear to analysts that Los Zetas had surpassed their former masters by becoming the second most powerful criminal organization in Mexico.